A challenging request from the mobile equipment market is an ever larger storage capability on phones, music players and handheld PCs with more and more reduced weight, size, power consumption and cost. In order to face this growing demand, new technologies have to be adopted in magnetic storage manufacturing along with a deeper integration of the electronic subsystems. For example, hard disk drives (HDD) are widely used as auxiliary memory devices in computer systems to magnetically record data. The development of new technologies in recent years allowed a continuous miniaturization of the HDD from an initial size of 3.5 inches to 2.5 inches, to 1.8 inches, and to a current size of 0.85 inches, while continuously improving HDD's storage capabilities.
The general miniaturization of HDD requires a size reduction of the hard disk placement, and as a result there is a strong demand for the HDD inner parts to be formed from a resin having reduced organic, ionic, and particulate contaminations. In addition, a high wear resistance is also required to insure long time stability of inner parts having repeating motions in contact with other metal or plastic components of HDDs, such as various latches, ramps, brackets, and the like.
Previous attempts to include internal lubricants, such as polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE), graphite, molybdenum disulfide, polysiloxane, aramid fiber, various oils, and reinforcing fibers, into the polymeric components in order to improve a wear resistance and a fractional loss resulted in undesirable increase in organic, ionic and particulate contaminations of the final product.
Accordingly, it would be beneficial to provide improved wear resistant polymer compositions having a low particulate contamination. This and other needs are satisfied by the various aspects of the present disclosure.